Prison-based rehab for addicts may not work

SHOULD prisons try to help inmates kick their drug habit? Perhaps, but there has been no assessment of whether existing programmes in UK prisons actually work, according to a report released this week by the UK Drug Policy Commission.

It asked the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at King's College London to review published evidence for the effectiveness of community and prison-based provisions for drug-using offenders. While there is reasonable evidence that community sentences have cut reoffending rates from 91 per cent to 53 per cent, there has been no assessment of whether prison-based provisions such as drug-free prison wings, have reduced drug use in the UK - even though investment in them has increased from £7 million to £80 million since 1997 in England and Wales.